Modern Princesses
by Demons of Disbelief
Summary: Disney movies. One chapter for each of the princesses and likely more female characters afterward. Modernized takes on the Disney versions of their stories.
1. Snow White

Something that most people forget is that Snow White is fourteen. She is sweet and innocent and kind. She escapes an evil Queen and keeps a house with eight people in it at fourteen.

She is a freshman in high school. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. Her mother died shortly after her birth, and her father remarried. After her father's death, it took ten years for them to discover she was abusing and neglecting her stepdaughter and had murdered her husband. Snow White was taken from the home and her stepmother faces trial.

Snow White pries herself out of bed every day. She eats breakfast with the sunrise and smiles her way through her day. She sings when she walks and is incredibly grateful for all the little things, because she spent too long without them. Everyone in the school knows her name. The teachers talk about the happy young girl with good grades (her counselor sees more tears than all the rest combined) and she charms the students with her incessant kindness.

She tries out for the cheerleading team. She has worked for weeks on the lawn behind her new home to perfect a handstand and a frontflip until she's not afraid to do it on the hard court instead of soft grass. She is the first person on the list posted the next day.

It does not come easily some days. Sometimes she sees a familiar face in the newspaper and tears come to her eyes and she has to stay home from school. Some days she is not good at math or writing or science and she cries over textbooks and admits to her counselor that she does not feel pretty or wanted or loved. She says she is not smart and every day is a struggle. Then she picks up her bag and steps out of the safe confines of the room and smiles and chatters to people as they pass.

Snow walks to school with a song on her lips and volunteers at the animal shelter afterward. She climbs out of bed with the sun and stays after school to perfect her cheer routine. These days she is so late she walks home in the dark.

She does it because if she does not she will stay in bed and cry for days.

She must be strong.

She has no choice.


	2. Cinderella

Cinderella is nineteen.

The day she turned eighteen she fled her stepmother's house - nevermind that it was her house, the moment the woman died - and spent several months in a shelter. She worked two minimum wage jobs and eventually made enough money to get into a small apartment with two roommates.

She filled out every scholarship application she could find and with outstanding test scores and an average high school career she gets accepted by several prestigious colleges. She didn't know how to explain to the interviewers that she had poor grades because she was never allowed to do her homework, so instead she tells them about dead parents and two younger siblings. She privately hopes that she does not get accepted only because of her lie.

She majors in veterinary medicine. Her work-study is not nearly as taxing as being a maid for her stepmother, and her grades soar. She makes the Dean's List her first semester. She buys textbooks on her student loans and squirrels as much money as possible away each month.

When her dorm roommate asks her name, she stumbles over it, before deciding that her name was _Ella_ like her mother's. It takes her a week to get used to it. She spends her free time volunteering at the local equine shelter, and eventually adopts three rats so the animal shelter cannot put them down.

She is a survivor of abuse. She joins group therapy on campus and finds peace in helping others. At the same time she begins to heal. She doubts. Her earliest memories are of scrubbing floors and being told she is worthless. She doesn't understand how her stepmother can be wrong. How she isn't worthless. She spent so much time being told she was nothing without her stepmother that she doesn't know how to believe otherwise.

Her counselor sits across from her and takes her hands and asks why she left. Ella looks up with tears streaming down her face and gives her a locket with two pictures. One is of a young, beautiful woman with golden hair and proud eyes. The other of a handsome man with her bones and blue eyes. Her father had left his lawyer a letter to be opened when she turned eighteen, and he had delivered from beyond the grave.

Most people don't leave. Most people can't. Ella accepts the hug with sobs wracking her body. She cannot fix her puffy eyes or the sadness drawn across her face when she leaves. Instead she gathers the books another student drops and when he asks about her tears she tells him she's had a bad day. She says nothing about these being the best days she's ever experienced. She's simply had a bad life.

Ella knows a lot about bad days. She sees eyes in crowds she once saw in mirrors. She stops to speak with them, and Ella is a good listener. After her first semester she changes her major to psychology. She wants to help people like her.

She is kind because so few people were kind to her.

She forces herself to go on when she has not manages to convince herself she deserves to eat.

She is kind and her room is messy and she gives to others parts of herself she doesn't have. She thinks she may never have those parts back, but she still gives them away as often as she can.


	3. Aurora

Aurora is sixteen.

She tried out for cheerleader her freshman year, and now she is captain of the team. She is the boldest member of the squad, always pushing them to greater heights. Their school is not known for their team so much as for her stunts and enthusiasm. She is not entirely sure if the crowd and cheers during the first half of the game make up for their emptying after halftime.

The teachers know her by name. She has always turned in her homework on time, her grades have never dropped lower than a B, and there is always a smile on her face. Her parents bought her a car the day she turned sixteen, and she always has the newest clothes and accessories. Aurora could wear clothes from the seventies and it would become the new trend. Still, she smiles in the hallways and offers a ride to the students who have to walk every time it snows. She gives money to the students who can't afford lunch in the cafeteria and pays for coffee for the person behind her in line. She sends food to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, and donates every year to help protect wildlife.

When she goes home, she places her bookbag on her desk and goes into the sitting room. Every day. She doesn't know what she expects, but her parents are never there. Her father is always on a business trip and her mother is either asleep recovering from managing or currently away managing a charity event. Instead she seeks out the company of the people who work for her parents. Flora tends the gardens and trees, Fauna feeds the cats, and cleans the house, and Merryweather cooks, although she rarely has to do much more than feed the four of them.

The three women are like mothers to her, they have been her babysitters and friends since she was a year old. She tells no one. When her friends are over she tells them her parents want her to have some fun and don't hover over her shoulders. They miss PTA meetings and games, practices and field trip slips are printed not signed. Her friends tell her how lucky she is to have a car, they don't realize that her parents only bought it so she wouldn't need to bother them to take her places. Her friends mourn not having as much spending money when she goes with them to the mall, and Aurora's smile slips as she remembers the call saying her parents couldn't come for her birthday. They could fill her bank account with more money than most people made in a year, though.

Her mother has missed fourteen of her birthdays. Her father has missed ten. She has spent six Christmases with Flora and Fauna and Merryweather, sitting next to a magnificent tree with truckloads of gifts from her parents (delivered, chosen, and purchased by an intern from her father's company). Her mother takes her to her Easter Egg Hunt every year. She drops her daughter off and tells her to have fun. Long after Aurora has fallen asleep on the ground behind one of the award booths, her mother finds her to take her home and drop her off before returning to help clean up. Her father takes her to the company's Thanksgiving Party, she eats her fills and watches as the other children are taken to visit family by their parents. Then she sits and reads while her father talks business with his unmarried partners.

She gives freely of the money she never wanted.

She knows that ridding herself of the money will not bring her parents back. She also knows that many of her classmates have neither money nor parents because one is too busy struggling to make the other.

She finds happiness in their eyes when she provides what no one else can.

Then she goes home and looks in the mirror and tries to find the same happiness in herself.


End file.
